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Spiritual, but not religious? A dangerous mix

This piece has just gone up at the Guardian's Cif. I took part in a discussion about the same research last night on BBC Radio 3's Night Waves too...

People who are "spiritual but not religious" are more likely to suffer poor mental health, according to a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Michael King of University College London and his colleagues examined 7,400 interviews with folk in Britain, of whom 35% had a religious understanding of life, 19% a spiritual one and 46% neither a religious nor spiritual outlook. The analysis led to one clear conclusion. "People who have a spiritual understanding of life in the absence of a religious framework are vulnerable to mental disorder [dependence on drugs, abnormal eating attitudes, anxiety, phobias and neuroses]." The work supports evidence from other studies too.

All the usual weaknesses associated with asking individuals about religion are at play here, as the authors acknowledge. Nonetheless, the study prompts a number of speculations.

The spiritual itch is a deep one in the human psyche, for those who feel it. To scratch without the support of others might lead to an inner obsession that spirals out of control. It is possible, too, that personal crises drive people to seek spiritual solace that of itself does not address the underlying psychological distress. Then again, the resources of a healthy spiritual tradition, not pursued in isolation, should provide or point to the means of addressing psychological problems. The ground is then gradually cleared for genuine spiritual growth.

This raises another question, though. Do religious organisations in the UK today take enough notice of the insights of psychology and, conversely, do schools of therapy treat spirituality seriously? As the Cambridge psychologist and priest Fraser Watts explored in a recent talk, American therapists, for example, seem to be far happier talking about their clients' spiritual concerns than their British counterparts.

This must highlight broader cultural differences. In the US, religion tends to carry associations of freedom. I remember an American priest once saying to me, when I expressed amazement at the prevalence of religiosity in the US, that Americans came from Europe fleeing religious persecution. The two words "religion" and "freedom" naturally go together in the American psyche.

In Britain, though, it appears that many individuals view religion as an impingement upon their spiritual searching. Christianity, say, is felt to constrain life – perhaps because of the negative attitudes it projects about gay people and women; or because it presents belief as more important than growth; or because it looks more interested in sin than enlightenment. If that is so, the new research is a striking indictment of the failure of British churches to meet spiritual needs: individuals are not just not coming to church, some are becoming mentally ill as a result of religious failure.

Other results from the research are striking too, though similarly not determinative. People with no religious or spiritual understanding were significantly younger and more often white British, but were less likely to have qualifications beyond secondary school, perhaps challenging research purporting to show that atheists are more intelligent.

Another finding of this work was that those who were neither religious nor spiritual had just as good mental health as those the religious. This contradicts a notion widely held in positive psychology that religion is good for happiness (though that positive correlation typically derives from North American evidence.)

Finally, the research challenges the stance of those who are spiritual but not religious. It might be called the individualism delusion, the conviction that I can "do God" on my own. And yet, as the psychotherapist Donald Winnicott argued, human beings need to work through traditions to resource their personal creativity. Only in the lives of others can we make something rich of our own life. To be spiritual but not religious might be said to be like embarking on an extreme sport while refusing the support of safety procedures and the wisdom of experts who have made the jump before. Spirituality is like love: more risky than you can countenance when you're falling for it.

Hi Mark, one of my very favorite visionary thinkers and cultural historians is William Irwvin Thompson. His book Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness is a tour de force.
Please check out a set of his essays available at this referencehttp://www.wildriverreview.com/user...
Essays which introduce all kinds of insights and connections that are seldom found in any of the usual stuff written about religion, science, literature and culture.

Really? Does the infinite and eternal then have a particular content, religious or other wise?
You sir, it is clear, have no experience of the eternal and unchanging from which all arises--the universal source referred to in all higher spiritual teachings, including the higher teachings within established religions.
This experience has no orientation for or against anything--it is untouched by the world and yet is the source of it. As Eckhardt said, "one is lifted entirely above creatures". In that sense then it is not a religious experience at all but is only colored--post facto-- by the experiencer's intellect and imagination, including many very individual "spiritual" characterizations not derived from any institution's dogma.
You apparently are using this survey to support the social institution and
dogma of social religion and to disparage any other context for the experience of the eternal.
As though the heart of religion were in the bureaucracy of it. Absurd.
You sir, are a thousand miles away from any such true experience and therefore from any true understanding of the foundation of all religion.
You are compelled by your file clerk mentality to attempt to negate the indubitable experience of the eternal within every heart--- available to all. You have failed even to intellectually appreciate it.
Thus, you do a great disservice, not only to yourself, but through your public speech--- to mankind as a whole.
It is clear in your every assertion that you have had no such experience. Your conception of religion and of God is as shallow as the lifeless bureaucracy you apparently champion. Your sort of religion might as well be a bank.

Unless I know just how they define religious versus spiritual I will ignore the study. There is no doubt that the greatest saints are the most
intense about their relation to God. If this is what you mean by "spirals out of control" then you have missed the point. Saint Francis was very neurotic by any modern psychiatric standard.
If you think he was crazy, then I think you are crazy.

[NB I have written extensively about these issues in my blog: Voice in the Wilderness, at ravenwilderness.blogspot.com]

This is really interesting. One of my dialogue partners, Sr Valerie Stark, sent me your article, pointing out that there is a correlation in the research but not a cause-and-effect; and secondly [third paragraph from the end] that the mainline churches have more or less abandoned the lower economic classes.

If I'm not reaching too far, this research seems to be saying similar to what I've been writing about at length both in my books and my blog [ravenwilderness.blogspot.com; 'Writing the Icon of the Heart: In Silence Beholding'] as a) the idolatry of experience, and b) the necessity for self-forgetfulness whatever path one pursues (in part because of the neuro-psychology involved), and c) that there is no such thing as a person who is not 'religious' because everyone holds a value-system, whether or not it is acknowledged and that without understanding one's value system one can, for example, d) become a better killer by meditating—and this can indeed lead to madness because the value system of killing is opposed to the ethics and values of the deep mind, the doors to which have been opened by meditation. The conflict and contradiction (not paradox) is too much to bear.

The tools of the spiritual life and the techniques they teach are morally neutral, and will amplify whatever value system a person holds, acknowledged or not. However, the value system of the deep mind is very different from that of the self-conscious mind. If the goal is to re-centre the person in the deep mind, then trying to claim 'spiritual but not religious' will just leave a person in the self-conscious (self-centred) mind.

Schizophrenia, for example, arises in part by getting stuck completely in the self-conscious mind (this is simplistic, but check Ian McGilchrist, 'The Master and his Emissary', on it).

It almost goes without saying that someone who is vain and self-centred enough to seek paranormal experiences is just asking for madness, in part because paranormal experiences are subject to the law of the paradox of intention, which means that seeking such experiences is counter-productive: it guarantees that they will arise only from within the squirrel-cage of self-consciousness that the person has created for him or her self (usually from the sickest part), rather than express interpretations of insight from the deep mind.

Perhaps there needs to be a distinction between a community of faith (which would be informal, eg., those who reluctantly have left organized religion precisely because it is not meeting their needs but who seek community where they can find it), as opposed to a community of believers (the formal religion of those who would believe [are bound by?] the same doctrines)?

Thanks for the thoughts. I did try to indicate the ambiguity of correlation and cause in my discussion, but perhaps should have been explicit. The researcher, Michael King, did indicate to me that he thought there could be grounds for cause, in fact, though it would need more research...

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